Gadi Eizenkot: IDF views Hezbollah as its top priority

During a ceremony marking the 11th anniversary of the Second Lebanon War, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot said that the military views Hezbollah as its top priority. Eizenkot added that the IDF is not ignoring the training that the terrorist organization is gaining from its participation in the war in Syria.

At a ceremony marking the 11th anniversary of the Second Lebanon War, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot commented on the situation along Israel’s northern border and Hezbollah’s status. “We are making the northern front and the Hezbollah group the highest priority of the IDF,” Eizenkot said.

Eizenkot said that the IDF believes that Hezbollah “suffered a serious blow” during the Second Lebanon War as over a thousand of its members were killed. The IDF chief of staff said that while Hezbollah has grown stronger over the years since the war, Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has remained fairly quiet.

“The Hezbollah organization is in a very complicated strategic reality with a third of the organization nowadays fighting in Syria, Iraq and Yemen,” he said. “The organization lost 1,700 of its people in three years, almost 7,000 injured. [These are] not easy problems in war.”

“On the other hand, the organization is gaining practice in fighting,” Eizenkot added. “We are not ignoring this.”